Welcome to Purdue University Weed Science

"A weed is simply a misguided plant"

Weed Science is the study of vegetation management in agriculture, aquatics, horticulture, right-of-way, essentially anywhere plants need to be managed. It involves the study of all the tools available for this purpose such as cropping systems, herbicides, management techniques and seed genetics. However, it is not just the controlling of plants, but the study of these plants. This includes plant ecology, physiology, and the genetics of plants species that have been identified to have impact on the economy and our ecology.

At Purdue University Weed Science is not a department, but a discipline that can be found in four different departments: Agronomy, Botany & Plant Pathology, Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, and Forestry and Natural Resources. These Departments all have or have had faculty and staff that work in the realm of Weed Science or vegetation management. Because the discipline can be found in four different departments, expertise in specific areas of Weed Science was divided. This web page was built to cross the departmental bridge and bring the discipline and topic to one site. It was built to better serve the public and support the County Extension System.